Aging Systems for Flavor

Disclaimer: Absurd as it seems, the IDSA claims you can't do this. [--ED]

You see, François, the wonder of
cooking with Linux. This tiny diskette contains a complete Linux
distribution. With it, I can set up an IP firewall and gateway
using nothing but an old 386. Mais oui, I read
about it on the Linux Journal web site in
their System Administration section. Ah, François, sometimes
I long for the days of small, fast applications, requiring just the
slightest hint of memory, the faintest glimmer of disk space, and
nothing but a subtle je ne sais quoi to
achieve grandeur. Cooking with Linux, all this is still possible.
Of course, in the old days, it was not all productivity,
non?

Oui, François.
Qu'est-ce que tu dit?Ah, mes
amis! Forgive me. I was reminiscing and did not notice
your arrival. Please, come in. François will see you to your
table, and I will choose a wine. Hm...what to serve?

Every once in a while, one longs for the days of some old
hardware platform on which they first practiced their computing (or
gaming) skills; a Commodore 64, a PET, an ATARI, an Amiga, a TRS-80
or even an IBM 1130. This is part of the normal human condition,
something called “nostalgia”. Not unlike a fine wine, some of
these old platforms seem to mature and take on subtle, elusive
qualities that can best be appreciated in a relaxed, open
atmosphere.

This month, in a special hardware issue, we are going to be
cooking with Linux, but cooking up something decidedly “un-Linux”
in the process.

Speaking of wine...François! Kindly bring up the '89
Pomerol from the cellar. Our guests are thirsty.

Emulators are quite common in the Linux world. You can run
old DOS applications with DOSEMU
and Windows applications with WINE
(knowing full well, of course, that Wine Is Not an Emulator). To
truly emulate something, you create virtual machines that run on
your current machine. With Windows, this is done using products
like VMWare
(http://www.vmware.com/),
which let you run full versions of Windows on Linux. Emulators can
also bring back systems long ago thought dead.

In the case of the products I describe here, you must
remember that the material is often still copyrighted. Some
emulators require that you have the original disks containing the
OS or the ROM image. Making software backups of old ROM cartridges
is beyond the scope of this article and would require that I keep
François working far too late. However, emulator sites do
store this type of information for various platforms. There also
are a number of public domain programs designed for each of these
platforms, so you can have the joy of playing a game with 8 bit
graphics without the guilt. I will also hold off until the end of
the article to give the appropriate URLs for each emulator I
discuss.

Getting these emulators is as simple as visiting the
appropriate sites on the Web. I won't spend a lot of time
explaining how to go about compiling each one. The format is
essentially the same for all.

First on the menu is an old favorite of mine. Once upon a
time, your humble chef had a Commodore 64 (not to mention a PET and
even a VIC20). For those who may still have old programs floating
about and long for the days of your favorite game, complete with
sound courtesy of Commodore's SID chip, try a little VICE, which
stands for “Versatile Commodore Emulator”; it is indeed
versatile. It can emulate the C64, the C128, the VIC20 and most of
the PET models. The “VICE Team” distributes the program under the
GPL.

Of all the Commodore models, I admit to having been quite
attached to my old C64. On a whim, I decided to try a little basic
program, for old time's sake. As you can see from the screen
capture (see Figure 1), Marcel's Commodore BASIC is not as sharp as
it once was. To launch a Commodore session, simply execute the
following:

Et oui, there are more. The C64 was an
actual computer, in that you had a keyboard where you could type
and do work. Not all the machines of the late 1970s and early 1980s
were designed for work. One of the most popular games of the time
was the Atari 2600 Video Computer System; it seemed everybody but
your chef had one, although he did visit friends who were willing
to share. For those longing to relive those days, there is
Stella, created by Bradford W.
Mott (although many others share in its continued development and
ports). Stella is distributed free of charge, but the license is
not GPL. Once again, there are numerous freeware games and demos
out there for the curious. Running a game with Stella is very
simple:

xstella path_to_game

Figure 2. Ah, Those Lovely 8-bit Graphics

The Atari 2600 was only one of many systems put out by the
company over the years. Petr Stehlik's first computer was an Atari
800XL, which he describes as something like a first girlfriend,
somebody (or something, as in the case of the 800) that you will
never forget. He is the current maintainer of the Atari 800
emulator, originally written by David Firth). Along with the help
of others, he continues to develop the product.

There is a huge repository of Atari 8-bit programs sitting
over at the University of Michigan software archives. A visit there
will provide you with hours of nostalgic fun. In the arcade games
section, you may even find the answer to that old question about
the chicken and the road with a familiar game called
chicken. A number of these programs are stored
in the old ARC compression format.
You may need to get something like
unstuff (the Alladin Expander) to
extract the files after you download them.

Another computer I was quite fond of in my early days, and my
first exposure to assembler programming, was a TRS-80 Model 1,
Level II. It was on this machine that I first learned BASIC
(Fortran actually came first on an IBM 1130). For the Radio Shack
TRS-80 enthusiast, you should find Tim Mann's TRS-80 pages with
emulators, links to documentation and other TRS-80 sites. In fact,
there is a wealth of information about every aspect of this nearly
forgotten platform. This is a man who, at one time, was a TRS-80
systems programmer and has never gotten it out of his
system.

Hardware emulators even make sense for people developing
software for existing platforms.
Xcopilot is such a program for
your PalmPilot. Using the getrom
program from the pilot-link utilities on your system, you can then
use this X Window version of the
copilot program to develop
software or debug applications without risking your own Palm
Pilot's sanity (I have crashed mine with experimental programs).
Or, you can simply run the applications on your desktop if you
happen to be fond of that Pilot interface.

Finally, for those with far too much time on their hands, I
discovered the most unlikely emulator. Remember those annoying
little electro-pets on a keychain, the Tamagotchi? If you miss your
little friend while you are busy working, you could run
Ktamaga, a Tamagotchi emulator for
the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

If you find yourself looking for emulators that will run
under Linux that I have not mentioned here, consider visiting
Freshmeat.net. Doing a search using “emulator” will give you
plenty to keep you busy.

Once again, it is time to close the doors here at Chez
Marcel. Apparently, I will be the one to refill your glasses one
more time before you go. It seems that François has
disappeared. He is probably playing that old chicken-road-crossing
game, non? Our François is a
hardworking man, non? I hope this little tour
has given you a taste of how your Linux system can help bring back
those long lost friends of your early computing days. Until next
time, your table will be waiting here at Chez Marcel.

Marcel Gagné
lives in
Mississauga, Ontario. In real life, he is president of Salmar
Consulting Inc., a systems integration and network consulting firm.
He is also a pilot, writes science fiction and fantasy, and
edits TransVersions, a science fiction, fantasy and
horror magazine (soon to be an anthology). He loves Linux and all
flavors of UNIX and will even admit it in public. In fact, he is
currently working on Linux System Administration: A
User's Guide, coming soon from Addison Wesley Longman.
He can be reached via e-mail at mggagne@salmar.com, and you can
discover lots of other things from his web site,
www.salmar.com.

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